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HERO - Several Hero Teams

This is basically a placeholder for anyone who has messaged me in game. If you are already on my friends list or have already talked to me, this is not meant as a shoo-off. Otherwise look here.

This is a thread for more-than-beginner players, veteran people that want a new playstyle experience, or experienced gamers with confusion about a particular style. Many of my SPECIFIC builds may not work for you. All will work for HM elite areas in most situations. Customize to your playstyle. If a build interests you and doesn't work for you, add a Minion Master.

Tactics are way more important than builds, so I likely have some sub-optimal skills.

Melee

Spoiler

This is a slightly defensive version. Drop some defensive skills like SoS, UA or the resto on the necro to get a little bit faster. The Blood Magic will keep you alive; trust in the aggression.

Ranged Physical

Spoiler

Massive AoE, single target damage is low. SoS/Painful bond would be a good replacement here if you slow down but try to hit the enemies from flatbow distance with a 1-shot 1-kill.

Ranged and Melee

Spoiler

Pets and SoH solve any AoE/single target damage problem. This is one of the faster, safer teams but it require a LOT of set up. I didn't show it so Koss is hammer per above and Xandra is my usual 16 channeling 13 resto build. Margrid has Winnowing and Favorable Winds.

Casters with physicals

Spoiler

KD centric. The idea is to eliminate damage and the kill it before you get hit. This will not work in areas like the Far Shiverpeaks, but it will destroy areas of human sized foes.

Ranged Spike

Spoiler

This is a VERY defensive build and I don't recommend anyone run. As you can see I'm leveling a hero. However the theory stands, and I'd recommend you add far more offense as it becomes available. This is a build you will either need to hot-key or run a defensive pathing pattern in. Ideally you instagib everything before it targets you.

Paras

Spoiler

This is basically a place holder. If you don't know how to make an 8 para team, take 3-4 motigons and 6-7 damagegons, with 2-3 attack skills per para. You will beat every area of GW.

Eles

Spoiler

This is a purely thematic ele build. However, it is a safe build and exceptionally good at certain area, like UW HM.

I left off a couple classes. If these don't answer questions I can post more but it's mostly casters vs physicals.

Edit: One final note, hot key at least a couple heroes. If you can manage 1-8 skills of your own there is no reason you can't manage 1 or a few of your heroes.

Part II. This is heroes 101 for new and returning HoM players. These are meant to guide you in making your own hero builds. They are not set in stone, but if you are lost, consult these. No specific skills are required to fill in these templates. If you WANT specifics, check out the GW wiki.

Most builds need a way to gain energy or reduce energy costs (and adrenaline, for several of the physical classes.)

If you have no idea what to fill in the 8th skill slot with, add a resurrection skill. If that skill is “Rebirth”, shift-click the skill on your hero’s bar to disable it. They will only use it if you click for them.

Party Support means something that helps the party as a whole via damage or defense. Some example are Ward Against Melee, Anthem of Envy, Bull's Strike, or Throw Dirt.

Monks
Monks have bad energy management. Stick to at most one 10 energy (10e) or higher skill. It isn’t a bad idea to have a monk bar with only signets and 5e spells.

You may ask, "I choose to make my monk 12 heal/12 DF, how do I satisfy the template, which calls for protection?"

Healing spells are pretty much by definition redundant. Even if you are pure heal, you STILL want that hero to follow the template at least roughly. Take one big heal, one heal he can spam (again Signet of Rejuvenation is a good choice).

Now because all healing spells... heal, take something else. Vigorous Spirit heals when the target does something. That's different, and will stack with your monk casting direct healing spells. See what we're doing? Healing Seed will trigger when the target takes damage and will again stack with your large and regular heals. See how it "prots"?

Experiment with the skills. Many people prefer to not use the above skills because hero AI is flawed. Make the decision for yourself.

Oddly, by popular demand, I present you by far the most requested build, my warrior's current and beyond end-game (i.e. WoC HM etc.) common team build.

Spoiler

The elites on the first three are totally useless, so swap for things like OoS or even UA. SoS is good for the spirit skills though. I usually round out with an interrupt barrage ranger and maybe a para.

Also, this is not the most efficient way to play melee; it's a cross between efficiency and drunkency. It works well without micros if you get the positioning of yourself down.

Thanks to the outrageous out-pouring of support for these builds, I feel like a blogger and you guys weird me out. I hope they inspire a few more people before GW1 dies forever. I may post ooooooone more build if I ever perfect the 100% Foundry HM hero team. Otherwise, see you in GW2.

Edit: Ignore the exact resto skills on the 3 rits, I use them differently for different missions (i.e. that's why there are 2 "Life"s.

Edit2: Eh, I can't leave it at that. When I take the 3rd rit I usually put on MoP and Barbs and ignore the resto. Also I'd put Signet of Sorrow on the necro. I was using them more for healing in whatever last mission I used them.

I was intrigued regarding the elementalist builds and figured I'll give it a try myself, found the results a bit underwhelming though.

Double Dragon build:
Your melee char will be ahead of your group, which means most of the time the DD effect will only matter on your own char, not on the elem (which I guess is the point, however, it will still mean you only get half the theoretical effect). What you end up with is spec'ing into fire solely for a mediocre elite skill with low uptime, while running reduced effectiveness on the rest of your (smiter) bar contrary to a primary monk. I don't think this is worth it.

Instead, why not stick to the traditional RoJ monk? The AI doesn't always use it cleverly, but I'd not rate it worse than DD, while you get better SoH and more effective smiting skills (divine favor).

I tired slotting Judge's Insight in there instead of Heaven's Delight, but this seemed to push energy-usage a bit above the tolerable limit. If there is some sort of party-wide energy-management available, you can safely run JI, otherwise I don't recommend it.

Stone Sheath Build:
I found this to have more potential simply because the elem will also benefit from the defensive buffs, also if running dervish or assassin, this helps with survivability. I didn't really think I needed it on my warrior. By placing the (to me) relevant smiting skills to the above monk, I don't think this necessarily needs monk/smiting secondary, instead I focused on the earth-skills with the option to leave any secondary with 10 points investment available. Stoning looked intriguing, the problem is however that the AI will not recast Stone Sheath on recharge, but rather when it's about to expire. Therefore you won't have weakness spread too much to fully make Stoning and Glowstone shine, you can however put additional skills causing weakness elsewhere (I put Enfeebling Blood on one of my rits).

(You can for example put /P secondary for SYG, or keep the /Mo secondary and run Judge's Insight and other Smiting Prayers by dropping Stoning, which is only semi-useful with no additional weakness)

All in all, I found it to be refreshing, but the Smiting Monk paired with an E-Surge Mesmer outperformed the two elem builds, even with SoH being the only melee buff left. When having trouble surviving with your front-line char, I'd consider the Stone Sheath elem to be a possibility though.

I wanted to break the "smiters" up in to two different bodies. You'll notice I have very little prot in that set up, so SS was a given. CE helps keep things around me and JI and SoH suck up the rest of the possible energy. JI and SoH are important because I have huge AoE and low single target damage other than myself.

The other smiter I want to be casting on me as often as possible to trigger ZF. The benefits of using an ele for this is 1) the bar is very energy taxing 2) DD (and SS) both help the backline if anything sneaks by. If the battle is not too stressful, or overly stressful, I was also micro SS and DD to get the full benefit of the skills and 3) RoJ has a lot less uptime than RoJ, and DD is always in the right spot (since it's on me .) It's a great excuse to use several rarely used smiting skills as well.

I was wondering if one of you fine folks could help me. I'm returning to GW after a 1-2 year hiaitus and am trying out hardmode which is something I never bothered doing before as well as using the increased hero cap to do areas that were previously out of my reach i.e. Anguish/Torment. I'm also trying out WiK on HM to get more medals to rack up my HOM points but here's the problem...

I seem to be terrible at Hard Mode. Only after several wipes did I notice many, many of the builds I had preset no longer work because skills have changed across the board (particularly with dervishes I note).

If anyone has any tips on how a primary mesmer can do hardmode with heroes (got every one except for the new ones attached to GW: Beyond), I'd seriously appreciate it as right now, I'm barely able to do anything :(

Yeah the pulling's never been a problem for me. I'm patient enough to do it carefully. Problem was that I could not kill a single group of mobs (white mantle) in hardmode without wiping or several deaths.

I incorporated a lot of the builds you linked. Thank you VERY much. I didn't realise how awesome Rits were in hardmode. Still a few difficulties but doing MUCH better than before. Thanks again ;)